


Spoken to Skin

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Book Spoilers, Complete, F/M, Post ADWD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1543709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. Post ADWD fic. Book spoilers! Quote challenge response fic. The quote this is a response to -  'I trust you'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoken to Skin

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks for this fic must go out to yellowdelaney and Nurdles, for being amazingly helpful to me at a tricky time.
> 
> To Chicky & co. for setting up this challenge. My assigned quote - 'I trust you'.
> 
> And to RoseHeart. You are the best. Oils!
> 
> WARNING: SHOW ONLY FANS SHOULD AVOID THIS, AT THIS TIME. HAVE A BISCUIT.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

 

SPOKEN TO SKIN

 

It has been plain since their hurried departure from Pennytree that this is all wrong. Perhaps even before Brienne had stubbornly refused any rest or care from the Maesters, almost pleading with him that they must go to horse and leave without delay. That the Hound will kill the Stark girl if they are late.

She is lying to him and Jaime knows it.

She won’t answer his questions, her words now reduced to strained seeming grunts, thrown back over her shoulder as she leads him through the darkness to the gods know where. The familiar sensation of prickling has covered the back of his neck time and again as they pick their way carefully into the thickening woodlands, the occasional snort emerging from their mounts as hooves catch on tree roots in the damp earth, lit only by the waning half-moon. For so much of his life he has been a soldier. He knows what it means.

_We are being watched._

Brienne is a black shadow ahead of him, swathed in a hooded cloak, but her posture in her saddle alone screams of her weariness. Honor nearly stumbles again beneath him and he draws to a halt. “My Lady,” he calls out, “we must rest the horses. Dawn is near. We can travel with greater speed after the sun has risen.”

She doesn’t seem to hear him at first, moving further away, but then she stops too and slowly dismounts. She appears to be close to swaying on her feet as she turns her horse and walks back to him.

_She is so tired._

Silently, under the lightening sky, they move through the trees, like ghosts in the twilight, leading their mounts. In a short time they find water, a pond which is barely more than a deep puddle, and hook the reins over a low-hanging branch so the horses can drink. Jaime pats Honor and goes to his saddlebag, unbuckling it and searching for provisions. There is a loud crack behind him and he swings about, only to see that Brienne has seated herself on a rotten log which has given away beneath her. She doesn’t attempt to move; she just sits there, hunched and looking impossibly small in the approaching morning. Jaime ensures the horses are calm before he rummages in the bag again, pulling out some cheese and bread.

He moves to her and crouches down, offering the morsels in his hand. “Brienne. You must eat something.” The Lady absently reaches out with her left hand, ignoring the cheese and lifting the small hunk of bread to her mouth, tearing off a chunk before returning what remains to his outstretched palm.

_She is heavily favoring her sword arm._

It is only when her fingers pull the tiny lump of bread away from her lips he sees that she is missing at least two teeth as well. The rage that has simmered within him all night begins to coil yet further in Jaime’s gut. At whoever did this to her. At himself for sending her away in the first place.

He remains quiet though, simply eating and watching Brienne as she nibbles almost daintily at the food she is holding. She seems to chew for an age, only to wince as she swallows. After a few mouthfuls she begins to cough, a dry, hacking rattle, and Jaime goes to retrieve a waterskin from his pack, tucking his leftovers away again. He uncaps the skin with his own teeth, virtually pushing it under her nose. Brienne balances what is left of her bread on her thigh and drinks deeply, nodding gratefully as she passes it back to him, but her hand is ice cold and unsteady against his.

_Her fingers are shaking. All of her is shaking._

He sits down next to her, the rotten wood underneath him collapsing with less force than it had before, just in time to catch her as she starts to slump in his direction, having dropped into a sudden and sharp, desperately needed bout of sleep. He turns slightly and tries to twist his cloak between his cuirass and her head. It is hard, but he manages it, and then finds he has to keep his hand tucked between her ear and himself anyway, to lift her bandaged cheek away from the uncomfortable surface. He waits for her as the sun rises.

He glances back every so often to see the horses happily chewing various bits of greenery poking up through the fallen leaves that carpet the forest floor.

Brienne snores against him and he watches her face screw up in some unpleasant thought, before it falls into restfulness again. Her hair is longer, but knotted, a mass of dirt which sits uneasily on her head. Bruises are glowing under her skin, a confused brawl of discoloration, albeit that her face is all he can see. Even her neck is swathed in wool to guard against the chill. Her cloak has fallen away from her right side somewhat and Jaime notices some light splinting on her sword arm.

_What happened to you, my Maid of Tarth?_

He looks up to distract himself and pretends he is playing the cloud game with Tyrion, as he had when his brother was small. A frog. A toothless dragon. A suckling pig. Though Jaime suspects that, were they playing the same game now, his brother’s ideas would be somewhat more obscene.

His lone hand is beginning to feel decidedly numb when a twig cracks off to one side. He turns his head quickly, trying to see, yet nothing is there but wet woodland. It doesn’t matter.

_We are still being watched._

His movement stirs Brienne though, and she seems to shudder into awareness, great spasms of discomfort shaking her as she sits bolt upright, next to him. “How long?” she roughly mutters, as she blinks, taking in the daylight.

Jaime glances at the sun. “An hour, perhaps. Maybe less.”

She nods. “Jaime, I…”

She looks at him and falls back into silence, struggling with something. Everything. She tries twice more, obviously wanting to tell him the truth, yet scared, her eyes darting around as if to find those who are stalking them. Each time, she fails to speak.

He waits, but when it becomes clear she cannot talk freely, Jaime rises to his feet and smiles down at her apologetically. “I have to piss, Brienne.” He steps around a nearby tree and makes water, all the time straining to hear any signs of movement about them. In short order, he is distracted by Brienne groaning lowly as she rises to her feet. She is hurting badly and he can’t bear it.

_Damn selfish fool. Sending a lone maid into the middle of a war for the sake of your own honor._

Once done, he rejoins Brienne, finding her leaning against the trunk of the tree their mounts are tied to, sipping from his waterskin. She caps it with some difficulty and hands it to him. He packs it away and grasps at Honor’s reins, but then she reaches for him and he turns to her.

_Come now, wench. This would be a good time to tell me._

Twice, she tries again and nothing comes to pass. But in the very moment that Jaime is prepared to give up, to go into whatever hell lies ahead entirely blind, she softly utters five words which almost stop his heart.

“They call me your whore.” She lets her hand drop to her side and leans back against the bark behind her. Her skin appears grey next to the damp trunk, but her eyes are bright, insistent, nearly inviting. Jaime’s mind is thrown into complete disarray as, despite his disquiet, his cock seems to lurch into life in his breeches, so it takes him a few moments to truly understand her. It is all far simpler and less surprising than his body would have him believe.

_This is a way we can talk._

He steps in, letting his cloak wrap around them even as he tries not to lean on her too heavily, resting much of his weight on his right forearm where it lies flat against rough bark instead. He lifts his hand and tangles it in the hair at the base of her neck, tilting her head so he can whisper directly into her ear. “I’ll have to be quite convincing.”

She turns her face and it is so close that the side of her nose bumps gently against his. Though the rest of her just feels horrifyingly weak, her thighs shaking next to his, her gaze is strong with warmth and conviction. “I know, Jaime. I trust you.”

Even as his heart seems to soar at words he hasn’t heard in so long, that he hasn’t ever dared hope to hear from her, Brienne’s features become closed as she shuts herself away from him. She continues, her words suddenly bitter. “But you shouldn’t trust me.”

“I know,” he says, his lips brushing hers for a slight moment in comfort, or perhaps something else. “Yet I do.” Brienne gasps, though whether it is at the kiss or his words is hard to say.

He smiles at her, tries to make her feel the truth of it, and then rests his lips against her uninjured cheek.

“Ribs? A few?” he whispers on her, knowing it would explain the coughing.

Her breathing stills for a heartbeat. Then there is a press, dry and precious, to his beard, the short, trimmed growth of it rasping against her lips. “Yes.”

“Your arm?”

“Broken, but healing.”

He travels his mouth across to the other side of her face, feathering the lightest of touches along her jawline as he sees the redness of bad wounds stretching out past the edges of her bandages. “Sword?” He must know if she can fight.

Brienne actually whimpers. “Barely.” It is a hushed, broken word.

Jaime tries to ignore her distress, just for the moment, and murmurs into a surprisingly small ear. He had never really noticed that her ears are small before. “The bite. A dog?”

Brienne lifts his head away from her own, five fingers cradling his chin, and looks at him sadly. She leans in and one mouth speaks on another. “A man.” She kisses him, an unspoken act of gentle trust, and Jaime is utterly stolen by it, even as part of his mind screams in rage, the cries of a lost Queen echoing at him through the decades. He goes to speak, to ask the obvious, but Brienne simply gives the tiniest shake of her head in reassurance.

His face falls to her shoulder in absurd relief and he nuzzles at the wrappings around her throat, wanting his lips to find the little point beneath her jaw where he knows he will be able to feel the marvel that is the pulse of her life still somehow beating within her. It is something he suddenly needs and he ends up tugging at the tightly wound wool with his teeth. Yet it is only moved a fraction when it brings another horror to his eyes. “What is this?” His words are a quiet, sharp hiss, though he knows exactly what this is. He has seen it before, on his own wrists. On hers. On another man, made to stand for countless days on a gibbet, displayed before a besieged fortress and an entire army that he himself came to lead. He has seen what rope burns look like on the neck of a breathing man, but this is worse, underlain by a band of dark blue bruising.

_She has been hanged._

A few short, sharp pants punctuate the air and her voice becomes rougher. “Noose or sword, she said.” Brienne raises his face once more and she is made agony before him. “I’m sorry, Jaime. Noose or sword.” Her eyes are pools of sheer pain, the depths of them clouded with the abject misery of this bleak choice.

Jaime understands at once. “A noose for you or a sword for me?”

“I wouldn’t choose,” she says, dropping a delicate kiss to the corner of his mouth. A heartfelt apology. A plea for forgiveness. “I couldn’t.”

“You did as soon as there was a noose about your neck.” His words are calm, but the sharp pang that slices through him shows as his lips return her gesture in a hard way, more centred, briefly angry, almost unchaste.

Brienne flinches in hurt at the pressure and he stops. “I didn’t choose for _me_ , Jaime.” She looks at him, puzzled, as if she doesn’t see why he doesn’t know that already.

He immediately does, and sighs. “Of course you didn’t. There are others.”

“There _were_ others.” Brienne rests her uninjured cheek on his shoulder, her breath tired against his throat. “Now there is but a child. A boy.”

_A boy. How bloody appropriate that I’m to die for a boy._

“She seems to like the noose,” Brienne mutters, the fingers of her uninjured arm blindly reaching up to comb through the hair behind his ear. Despite everything, he shivers at this, and tries not to think of it as he asks what seems to be a pertinent question.

“Who is she?”

There is nothing but stillness and silence for the longest time. Brienne herself almost seems to stop breathing, the dampness she has made on his skin growing chill in the morning air. But then she pulls herself upright and wraps her left arm about him, as if making ready to hold him on his feet, whilst she brings her face close, until all he can see is blue. The name she speaks, softly but clearly, cleaves into him. “Catelyn Stark.”

“Catelyn Stark is dead.” His answer is instant, stuffed full of blunt denial. He is struggling to keep his voice lowered and a flood of panic in check.

_It can’t be. She died at the Twins._

Brienne rests her forehead gently against his and this small touch seems to carry with it the weight of the war-torn world. “Yet she lives. But she is not the same, Jaime.” There is only sadness left in the Maid of Tarth. “They call her Lady Stoneheart. She is a monster now. She only exists for vengeance.”

Real fear roars through Jaime. “Against me.” It is a statement, not a question.

Brienne pulls away a little, glancing down at the hilt of Oathkeeper wryly. “Against you, yes. And against anyone who can be called a lion.” Jaime looks at the already battered hilt of the sword, little nicks clearly visible in the leonine decoration his father had chosen, some of the precious stones gone missing.

_I gave her my sword, my honor and it marked her. Made her a target. I might as well have branded her with a bloody lion and been done with it._

“I’m sorry I led you to this,” Jaime whispers to her mouth.

She shakes her head fiercely against him and quiet words of apology begin to tumble out of her. “I’m sorry I failed. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I…I…Jaime…”

Brienne stutters to a stop, agonized, and sure knowledge bolts through him.

_If the Stark woman is truly turned monster…_

He reaches up to stroke her face. And he smiles. “She wants _you_ to kill me.”

There is no confirmation. It isn’t needed. Brienne’s eyes fill with water and it begins to roll down, in fat teardrops, over her skin. She does not sob. In fact, no sound comes from her at all and this is what he finds most unsettling. He knows he should be feeling the sharp sting of betrayal, that once more somebody would trade him for their own ends. But he knows better. He knows _her_ better. Whatever they must face today, the Maid of Tarth doesn’t expect to live. She will see herself dead to save him and this boy, whilst somehow keeping her oath to a woman who, by all accounts, long since had her throat cut to the bone, at his father’s behest.

_Not if I can help it._

After all, he became so wrapped up in her ideals of honor that he sent Brienne, still a young woman, no matter how strong, no matter how capable, to fight in the midst of a war _on her own_. Where, in his right mind, he would send no lone _man_. He is really the one who has brought her low like this.

_I betrayed her first._

He puts aside his anger, his fears, and catches her tears with his mouth. He feels Brienne shudder against him, but there are things he must know and she needs a distraction.

“How many?” he asks, feeling her suck in a long, yet shallow breath before she can answer.

“Dozens.”

His words, though they remain quiet, become swifter. “Will they kill us without her?”

“I don’t know.” She drops her lips to his absently in thought. “Thoros was unhappy with her.”

He returns her kiss. “Thoros of Myr? The fire priest?”

She nods, barely. “Do you know him?”

He just takes the last of the water from her face and kisses her again. _Perhaps there is hope for me yet. Only a little, given my history with the man, but enough._ “Where are they?”

“A cave. One entrance.”

He leaves this bad news to one side and asks for more, tasting a particularly dark freckle with the very tip of his tongue. “You could kill me now and this boy would be saved?”

Shivers turn into words, quietly spat into his ear. “I will not travel your head in a _sack_ , Jaime.”

He laughs against her, a low rumble that seems to shake through them both as another, less distinct freckle becomes troublingly interesting to him. “Well thank you for being stubborn about _that_ , at least. I’ve had my head put in a sack before. The view was dreadful.” He moves back to her mouth and finds that when he rests his lips against hers again, he isn’t pretending anymore. “Do you think we can hold them off for about two hours?”

Blue eyes grow wide in shock.

_Here, my Maid of Tarth. Some hope for you._

Brienne hadn’t let him out of her sight after her arrival in camp, but Addam had only needed a few small hand signals from him to know what he thought was needed, back in Pennytree. _Ten men. Heavily armed. Disguised. Two hours behind. Rest at dawn._ Given what he has learned since, ten men may not be enough and two hours may be too long. He is only risking his warhorse because he has managed to train Honor to drag his hooves when Jaime sticks his heel into his flanks in a particular way, leaving a trail, which may not yet be found. Still, hope is hope and he can feel it in Brienne, in this very moment, as she seems to become physically lighter under his fingers.

Having found it, her eyes narrow in a blatant challenge. “Perhaps,” she mutters, her lips large and dry and soft against his own. “If you can talk enough. Do you think you can?”

He huffs against her. “Oh, I have plenty of things to say about your injuries, Brienne.”

She frowns, he thinks, though it feels strange because she can only do so fully with one side of her mouth. “But most of them weren’t inflicted by the Brotherhood, Jaime. It was the Bloody Mummers.”

He jerks his head backwards in surprise. “What?”

She grabs him by the scruff of his neck, pulling him closer again. “I was at an inn.” She seems to struggle with her next words, her skin turning red as she suddenly tries to turn her own face away, seeking to look at the mud at their feet. “It was being run by orphans when we were attacked.”

They are both near to laughing when he nudges her face back up. “ _Orphans_? I didn’t ask you to find _all_ of the children, Brienne.”

Her answer is weary. “I know, Jaime. I…”

Leaves rustle, far too close. Jaime looks to the horses, and seeing that it is not them, throws himself bodily around Brienne, foolishly, as if to protect her.  She, in her turn, pushes him away at the shoulder, only slightly, breathing harshly.

_Her ribs. Be careful._

He intends to apologize, but he finds her gazing down at him strangely. And then he realizes why. For all that he has tried to ignore it, though he has tried to avoid even thinking about it, his cock is hard and now pushed firmly against her thigh.

The best woman in the world looks down at him a state of absolute confusion. “You call me ugly.”

“Lannisters lie,” he says softly, deciding right then, as he covers her lips with his, that her mouth might one day have been his as well, had he even thought she could wish it. They begin, on this day of their end, so gently. He is now shockingly aware that his body is screaming for hers, but he does nothing more than taste her mouth with his own, albeit that he is sure he can almost feel his absent fingers curling in frustration.

At first, he just presses his lips to hers, as they had before. Brienne is unmoving for a little while, but then his touches are gingerly answered and he smiles against her. He cannot, and would not, ask for anything else as she must be so sore.  But he gives in to the temptation of running his tongue over her lower lip for just a moment. This is met with a sharp intake of breath and the slightest opening of her mouth. He darts the tip of his tongue out, scarcely touching crooked teeth and he delights in them. In her. He is brought back to his senses, however, when his tongue skips over open spaces, reminding him of the condition she is in and what she has lost. Despite that, he shifts his head back and grins, taking pleasure in the plump redness of her lips and the darkness of her eyes. “You look well when you’ve been kissed, my Lady.”

For a breath, her half-smile, uncomfortable but honest, is like basking in summer sunshine. But then her regard seems to cloud as all of her doubts rush back in. She looks warily at him. “What _is_ this, Jaime? Do you want…?” Unable to speak more, she just drops her head and waves her left hand vaguely, back and forth in the air beside them.

He struggles to keep his voice low. “ _Now?_ Don’t even suggest it.”

It is the wrong thing to say. A lifetime of pain and rejection flashes across her averted features and she tries to turn her face yet further away from him. “Look at me, Brienne.” She won’t and it takes three attempts to turn her eyes back to him. “Listen to me. _Hear_ me.” He is desperate to make himself clear, damn near hissing at her. “Brienne, when I fuck you, you will be uninjured, fully awake and not leaning against a tree, covered up to your arse in mud!”

If his words are crude and somewhat bluntly spoken, Brienne doesn’t seem to notice, merely looking at him in disbelief. “When?”

He presses his cheek to her uninjured one with a sigh. “Brienne, I mean for us to be together. If you’ll have me.” He leans back, his eyes catching hers, and chuckles a little. “And if we don’t die later on today.”

She simply scowls at him. “You wear a white cloak, Jaime.” Not, perhaps, a response he would’ve hoped to an offer of betrothal. But from his dear, mulish Maid, it barely counts as a surprise.

“Fuck my white cloak,” he mutters, and waits for the words of honour and duty that are bound to follow.

They don’t come.

Instead, he watches Brienne’s face slowly settle into a quiet, small sort of glow under her tired pallor. She knows better than he that they might as well be building castles in the air out of wine and honey, for all of their chances of surviving what lies ahead. “You’re getting a little adventurous,” she says. “Your cloak?”

He laughs and kisses her. “There’s my wench, all come back to me.”

She flinches. “Not quite all.”

“I don’t care,” he replies, stroking her brow. “I love you.” She just gapes at him, ugly, stubborn, alive, stunning, and he smiles. “Please remember that, if I end up swinging from a tree branch by nightfall, stuck full of sword holes.”

“I…” It takes a while for her to find her voice and when she does, the words she has never spoken feel like spring rain, gentle and warm, washing him clean. “I love you, Jaime. And I’d rather you didn’t die.”

Jaime lets her words sink in, allows them to fill him and make him whole again, at last. But then he moves to whisper into her ear. “Please, Brienne,” he chides, “I’m far more likely to be mourning the loss of the honorable Maid of Tarth, who fell on her own sword for me.”

She is shaking underneath his fingers, only Jaime thinks that this time it isn’t because of tiredness or pain. She turns her face to his and her eyes are shining, swallowing his whole world, all of him. “Not now,” she whispers, her voice suddenly thick and raw. “Not if I can help it.”

_Hope for both of us, however faint._

He looks at her with utmost seriousness. “Good.”

They spend a little time just being together, eyes wandering over skin and lips brushing now and then. A simple thing, but theirs alone. Yet before the sun moves too much, they reach a silent accord.

_We have to leave._

He pushes himself away from the tree, groaning in discomfort as his right forearm leaves it. Brienne reaches out without a second thought, to brush away the flakes of bark stuck to his stump. The brief gesture roots him to the spot, spearing into his heart, even as she shyly ducks her head and steps around him to untether the horses.

_What could we have been?_

Jaime doesn’t think it matters at this point. He takes Honor’s reins from Brienne and they lead their mounts on.

They travel without words, even when the scale of the horror they are to encounter becomes clear. Many hours later, almost every tree seems to bear the bodies of the hanged, while others hold only empty ropes, marking the places where rotten remains have dropped away, the flesh and bones long since scavenged by wild animals.

Every so often, he feels blue eyes rest on him. He never fails to meet her gaze, filled as it is with fear and hatred of her own actions. Of having brought him to this.

Jaime will not have it. He knows that this is not a choice Brienne would’ve made, had there been any other open to her.  So he looks at her in return, almost defiant in his obvious affection.

_Lead me into hell, my Lady. Lead me into all seven of them. I would not have you go alone. Not again. Never again._

Night begins to fall and there is nothing but blood and darkness and death to be seen, strewn in their shared path. But at least they will not walk it alone.

 

 


End file.
